wouldn't trust the NSA with them.

I trust the SS administration with my information. I do not trust Booz Allen Hamilton with my information. Is Booz Allen Hamilton a government agency that gives me recourse if some information is wrong?

get it corrected.

But at least with the IRS you have recourse and the ability to get information corrected. I saw that and it was a stupid thing to happen. If the NSA had done that we would never know.

with my information.

and that just proved it.

I had thought we had a fairly fruitful discussion about this.

============================

Say I was a gay man who had not revealed this to his conservative employers, and I have made myself known to President Santorum due to being a nuisance at a public event. He tells his spooks to look in my NHS record and find some dirt. Lo and behold, he finds I have a chronic HIV infection and have reported a homosexual relationship to my doctor. He could then hold this over my head as blackmail or release it to the regular suspects in the right-o-sphere and attempt to smear me (assuming this is still an effective tactic 10 years from now).

However, to do so, he would have to break the law (HIPAA, in this case).

Similarly, he would have to break the law to extract my closet-skeletons via the FBI/NSA route, as you and others have outlined previously. This, if I understand correctly, is the heart of your comparison.

However, there is a difference in the threat level.

1) Abuses of an NHS would be easier to audit and reveal, since there should be no security clearances attached to the operations of such a system, outside of HIPAA-style privacy protections.

2) FBI/NSA style intelligence gathering is much more opaque, concealed with several levels of security and having a very low audit rate. Also, it can gather much more than my medical history. It can potentially know my entire social network (if I'm not cautious or technology aware) as well as the contents of all my electronic communications. Breaching the NHS database is a violation, to be sure, but that data is a small subset of what can be found using intelligence systems, and I have no way to protect myself because I have no way of knowing how they got that information.

Moreover, the good yielded by an NHS would heavily outweigh the risk, based on examining the dozens of diverse implementations the world over, whereas we have no proof of efficacy with respect to intelligence gathering systems.

Thus, I think the argument can be made that supporting an NHS would not conflict with the goal of restraining in law our electronic eavesdropping capabilities.

There are historical records we can look at to see who is more accountable with people's personal data, not even more trustworthy, but who is accountable, and who is not?

It's not hard to figure out that for profit Corps are not held to the standards elected officials are supposedly held to, which is why Congress has taken the out of handing over our 'Security' to their buddies in the Private Sector.

are lying. Enough of the garbage we've been so meekly accepting.

This privatization of everything needs to end, and that is the issue that should be at the top of the list in the next election.

I thought it was doing well.

came into office. Eg, I would not want any of the 'new contractors' that emerged to touch anything that has to do with the people's personal business, yet that is what is happening.

The problem is huge, and Medicare, Medicaid, SS are all targets of these criminals, criminals who control many of these Corporations.

Sometimes prevention is better than cure.

They and big blue put BAH to shame in terms of shadiness

Contacting had always been an essential part of governing.

The IRS had some wrong information, I was able to contact them and they fixed it.

Whose sole focus is to teach little children, not spy the fuck out of people. Its amazing that humans have the brain capacity to trust the sweet old kindergarten teacher down the road but not some rat bastard spy working on behest of the 1%. Sounds like an immensely complicated process. Maybe some humans really can't do it.

...could be used

What's your point? Do I trust my former college to protect my privacy (though they had on multiple ocassions against very powerful groups)? Ultimately, no.

So?

Are you getting at something? Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater and burn all elementary schools and colleges now?

...that could DEFINITELY be used against a person for a myriad of reasons.

Should we trust the government with medical records?

regards

You don't have single-payer, you never will and single-payer can be run without a vast electronic database of your medical information (as it was for decades in Canada).

So maybe you should this argue this from a simple viewpoint:

electronic medical records may be potentially dangerous and ripe for privacy violations.

And that is a very good debate worth having:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/14/bc-health-privacy-breach_n_2475424.html

Ultimately though, the sole purpose of the HHS isn't primarily to identify dissidents, criminals, future terrorists, etc. If that ever because its focus, then most surely giving them any more information would be detrimental to civil rights.

...why would I trust them with either?

Regards

I'm not sure why anyone thinks any person should be ultimately "trusted". Thats why we have accountability, audits, reports, investigations, etc. That is how a society functions....by keeping those who have the ability to abuse their power in check.

And no....metadata isn't "less" information. Its different information. It can be used to create social networks and circles to segment/profile--via associations & memberships--with high confidence to identify criminals and future criminals for manual spying.

History has shown these are very different things

...for instance

They myriad of ways it can be used against us is too vast to list IMHO.... same with phone records

These can be used for far more nefarious purposes - they are specific to individuals, too, unlike the phone number data.

...more definitive to the person too.

It's really hard to skate out of the fact that someone was prescribed a medicine.

When they lost records I needed at the time. Then they were suddenly "found" after I raised a fuss.

On one hand it would help things, but I don't want to have to worry about my medical records getting obtained by someone who shouldn't have them...

Kinda scary..

Or maybe you are comparing apples to oranges.

In any case, single payer existed long before easily accessible and sortable electronic records. They are not necessary and privacy is a very real concern, as illustrated by the breach of millions of records by contractors in British Columbia recently. Its a debate worth having if Americans ever had the balls to debate privacy and debate single-payer. But they don't

...used against someone is too vast and varied to list IMHO

But first, stop comparing apples to oranges to drive some ridiculous point home about a take-it-or-leave it homogenous government that we must either be for or against.

...in the senate can stop the will of the majority in American and unmitigated gerrymandering allows the few to overide the many in the house.


I don't believe these are apples and oranges comparisons
regard

DNA analysis in the hands of HMO's would be very bad. DNA markers in a national database with details kept at the local level is good crime fighting and victim IDing. It isn't just a matter of "trust".

Corporations have already started wellness programs where employees who participate get discounts on their insurance deductions.

though I doubt you'll see much thought going on!

But it does show that this "spying on Americans" is not really something to get excited about. It would have to be a lot worse to justify all the hand wringing.

anybody with any information.

Just recently, in a local town/city, a bunch of medical records was found carelessly thrown away in a dumpster.

The same thing has happened with printed bank records. Thrown in a dumpster. Not even shredded.

at the insurance company where I work.

If that gene is found you wouldn't get a thing but a boot out the door.

They will map your emails, calls, fb postings, forum postings, irs data, credit card purchases, guns, health, and dna (along with other info) so that they can insure you are not doing things which are bad for you personally and increasing health care costs.

A sick person is not productive for our corporate overlords. The more the government knows about you the better they can help you and others become all that you can be.

And just think of how they can gather statistics to help others. This is all for our best interests.

We can be more safe, have better health, and folks in DC can assist us in making better choices. You can find out if your neighbor owns a gun and drinks. Did that one lady in church have an abortion? Is that person you are thinking of marrying have some odd genetic issues that you might want to know about ahead of time, and was their dna picked up at an old crime scene?

We should trust our government, when have they done anything to cause us not to trust them? Other than things like this:

New Book Documents Cold War Experiments on Kids
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023197246

See - they do it all for the kids and our safety.

If they want them, I'm sure they can ask for them and will receive them at will.

Medicare and Medicaid are both managed by private health insurance companies, so I'm sure "exchange of information" is in the secret contract.

...phone records are bad enough...

Access to medical records is worse

We need to figure it out, now.

The only medical history I have going back four generations is more-or-less, "I think he/she may have died from (insert guess here)". The people that would know are all dead, the information is lost.

That kind of information is incredibly important to future generations and I'm sick of it being purposefully shit-canned because someone who thinks they know better than me is worried about their bout with impotence being on file. Fuck them.

access his records and discuss with my Husband any procedure or prescription change that was done in another facility by another Doctor. My Husband can go to his Dr. and find out what his blood pressure was on June 3 2012. He can find out when his medications were adjusted or changed. He can discuss these things with his Dr. The key being, he can discuss it and get print outs if he wants them.

Screw the government, man! They got laws and regulations and shit to follow.

Libertarian all the way, baby!

....we're going to single payer IMHO

The NSA is a centralized, aggregation of all communications, done in secret.

Medicare/Medicade is a centralized database of just medical information we voluntarily submit, that is highly regulated, especially in regards to privacy, and accountable being its rules not conducted in secret.

No comparison really.

...doctor.

If you were that concerned.

...than phone call numbers

There are no alternatives to them, while there are always private options.

Since he has not shown a whole lot of respect for privacy? Maybe that would get his attention?

Michelle Bachmann's efforts are unlikely to succeed even with progressive support.

Point of interest, under the social history section of a History and Physical report and with very few exceptions in my work over the years ... nobody drinks excessively and nobody confesses to imbibing in what is referred to as "recreational substances." I think people have been wary of disclosure for a long, long time.

It may take some time to weed out teabaggers and corporation-friendly congressfolk (D and R), but I believe single-payer/Medicare for all WILL happen.

Do they think people have a right to a certain degree of privacy?